Happy Easter/Passover or Welcome to Spring, whatever your tradition.
A photo of my Easter Branch which I always make at home and which L calls my fertility altar!
(Incidentally, when Karim the Agent called round later in the day to attend to some sudden lighting emergency, he as a Muslim, liked it so much that he immediately took some photos to put on the adverts for the flat, and he and his two cousins happily accepted and munched on chocolate eggs!!)
This morning we woke to the bluest of skies and a golden, shining world.
The city outside our flat, and in our apartment building was still and silent. At eight in the morning there was not a person or a car within sight or sound. Peace and light.
We were not in a hurry, but neither could we hang around. We wanted to be out of the flat by 10.00 am to make our way over to the 5th Arrondisement to the Rue Mouffetard and St. Medard’s Eglise for the 11.00 a.m. Service. We had heard wonderful things about this Easter Service and the organ, as well as wanting to be amongst Parisians, or at least one group of them, celebrating Easter. We did not want to be at some Tourist centre or alone in the flat.
All went well and we arrived just as the service before was finishing.
.
Fairly soon the church was packed to bursting with more and more people coming in all the time. And I sat eagerly anticipating the Led Zeppelin, roof-rousing organ performance we had read about.
Unfortunately, not this year. The Service was dignified and included many baptisms and faces around us were smiling and friendly: following the Order of Service while the French was read was excellent for recognising phrasing patterns and checking on pronunciation and although I got the gist of the sermon L did not. After three quarters of an hour her back was aching and she needed to move about so she left: I joined her fifteen minutes later and found her sitting on the pavement in the sunshine drinking coffee, just outside the Church. Which is where I shot these little videos: so much goodwill and friendliness, and not put on for the tourists either. We saw very few others apart from us.
Do watch these as they are full of the wonderful atmosphere we enjoyed this Easter. Such an unexpected treat!!
When we finished our coffee we set out to explore this area which neither of us knew: and we fell in love with it. It had a little of the feel of Montmartre but without any tourists. A real community feel, with people buying meat and groceries for lunch, plus of course, cakes and chocolate.
One little girl was literally jumping up and down in the queue with her parents waiting to go into this shop!
And outside the Ironmonger’s they had put this on the pavement:
We were back at the singing and dancing and finally had to drag ourselves away as we had a restaurant booking for lunch:
It brought tears to my eyes and I had one of my ‘moments’. This was just the local French living life and celebrating, as came naturally. Do you notice the dad dancing with his small daughter? We were so privileged to be there:
as we turned to leave I noticed the building next to our cafe.
To be continued.
stopping by woods 